Platform as a Service (PaaS) vs. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Key Comparisons

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In the post-pandemic corporate world, cloud-based solutions have overshadowed on-premise infrastructure across numerous business verticals. Platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are commonly used by enterprises today. This article explores the key comparisons between these two cloud-based services.

Table of Contents

What Are PaaS and IaaS?

In the post-COVID corporate world, cloud-based solutions have overshadowed on-premise infrastructure across numerous business verticals. The two cloud solutions commonly used by enterprises today are platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

SaaS vs. PaaS vs. IaaS

Platform as a service, commonly known as PaaS, is defined as a cloud solution wherein third-party vendors deliver remotely hosted products and services over the internet. Meanwhile, infrastructure as a service, also known as IaaS, is defined as a cloud-based solution that is leveraged by enterprises to access computing, networking, and storage resources as and when required and only need to pay for what they use. Companies use varied functionalities offered by these cloud-based solutions to fulfill their business needs.

PaaS explained

How PaaS Works

Companies use PaaS to access a comprehensive cloud-based development and deployment environment. PaaS allows users to access resources for the delivery of a range of applications. This includes everything from simple apps for cloud access to complex enterprise applications powered by the cloud. Users can purchase the required PaaS resources from a vendor and access them securely over the internet. PaaS providers normally offer their services on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Public PaaS solutions are ideal for a public cloud environment. This type of PaaS enables users to exercise greater control over deployment activities. Meanwhile, the management of ancillary activities, such as delivering critical IT components like databases, operating systems, storage system networks, and servers, are left to the PaaS provider. Public PaaS removes the complexity associated with vital IT functions such as application hosting.

Conversely, many enterprises use private PaaS to leverage the agility associated with this system while also enjoying compliance, cybersecurity, cost savings, and other benefits of using private data centers. Private PaaS solutions are normally delivered as software or appliances within the client’s firewall, which is generally maintained in an on-premise data center. Private PaaS is flexible in nature—users can develop and deploy it within any type of compatible business environment. This variant of PaaS is capable of operating within the isolated private cloud of a client company.

With private PaaS, developers can enjoy a relatively simpler work environment. Additionally, internal resources are consumed more efficiently, and the skyrocketing costs associated with ‘cloud sprawl’ are potentially averted. Developers also rely on private PaaS to deploy and manage company applications while ensuring that their cybersecurity and privacy needs are met.

Finally, the hybrid PaaS variant combines the features of public and private PaaS solutions. With this model, companies can enjoy the flexibility of infinite capacity that a public PaaS environment provides. At the same time, they can leverage the cost efficiencies associated with owning internal infrastructure in a private PaaS setting. Hybrid PaaS solutions utilize a hybrid cloud environment.

Also Read: What Is Platform as a Service (PaaS)? Definition, Examples, Components, and Best Practices

IaaS explained

IaaS is a cloud-based solution that enterprises use to access leased servers for storage and computing applications. IaaS enables organizations to store data and run software on remotely hosted infrastructure without having to worry about its maintenance and operations. Instead, end-user organizations are required to pay a comparatively nominal, recurring subscription cost that is usually flexible and depends upon the number of server resources consumed.

How IaaS Works

IaaS is leveraged to avoid hassles associated with the procurement, setup, operation, and management of on-premise data centers. Like other ‘as a service’ products, IaaS solutions can be scaled up or down as required by the end user. Another key feature of IaaS is a robust service level agreement (SLA) for both uptime and performance. IaaS also allows end-user companies to access servers close to their clients, thereby addressing technical and regulatory concerns.

IaaS offers top-tier efficiency and affordability, especially when compared to the purchase and maintenance of on-premise servers. It also helps counter the threat of obsolescence, especially in business environments that routinely test and develop cutting-edge applications. This is because IaaS providers constantly upgrade their infrastructure in accordance with the latest industry standards.

Also Read: What Is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)? Definition, Examples, Types, and Best Practices

5 Key Comparisons: Similarities and Differences 

PaaS and IaaS have many similarities as well as differences. In this section, we elaborate on some key comparisons between these two cloud-based solutions.

PaaS vs. IaaS

Similarities between PaaS and IaaS

As both are cloud-based solutions often delivered using a similar model, PaaS and IaaS have quite a few similarities. Below are five such similarities between the two cloud-based business solutions.

1. Delivery and migration

In the case of both PaaS and IaaS, delivery takes place over the internet. Delivery can take place through virtualized servers that are cloud-based and secure. The end-user organization can access the solution through application programming interfaces (APIs) or dashboards. In both cases, clients can exercise a near-full degree of control over the platform or infrastructure that they have subscribed to.

Unlike SaaS, both PaaS and IaaS deliver support solutions for software instead of the software itself. In the case of PaaS, the vendor provides a platform that enables software creation. Businesses use PaaS to create and design applications that can then be integrated with PaaS through middleware.

Meanwhile, companies leverage IaaS to enhance their infrastructure’s performance, scale, and security and associated operations, as required. With IaaS, the need to host, update, or manage on-premise business architecture becomes minimal. 

Finally, effortless migration is a feature offered by both these solutions. The adoption of PaaS and IaaS is a quick and economical method to migrate applications and related workloads to the cloud. Migration also helps reduce the long-term budget needed for daily business operations.

2. Flexibility, scalability, and affordability

PaaS and IaaS both offer high levels of flexibility and scalability to end users. For instance, access to either solution can be granted to as many users as required, provided that the subscription plan supports this arrangement. At the same time, client companies can easily choose from different resource tiers as per their dynamic business needs. 

Easy testing and development is another feature that is common to both solutions. By using PaaS and IaaS, organizations can deploy, scale, and decommission testing and development environments within a few hours, all without significant business costs. Using these flexible platforms, end-user companies can swiftly bring new ideas, products, and applications to the market.

Flexibility is also apparent because both solutions allow the addition of development capabilities without the need for intervention by expert personnel. Whether it’s PaaS or IaaS, developers can add new capabilities to the company’s portfolio as required, without the need to consult on-location experts.

Next comes multi-platform development. PaaS and IaaS allow for easy development on most platforms. Vendors usually offer development options for multiple platforms, including computers, smartphones, and web browsers. This makes cross-platform app development much quicker and easier.

Whether it’s PaaS or IaaS, end users gain access to cutting-edge technology at an affordable price. The current standard for both solutions is ‘pay-as-you-go’. This subscription model allows organizations to use advanced business intelligence, development, and analytics solutions that would otherwise be too costly and cumbersome if they were to be purchased outright.

Finally, these cloud services are known for infusing agility into workflows. Both solutions allow employees to access and work on workflows and applications at any time and from anywhere. As business requirements increase, enterprises can expand their operations without having to worry about cloud provisioning and the associated resources and costs.

Also Read: Top 10 Best Practices to Manage Hybrid Cloud Security Challenges in 2021

3. Deployment time and speed

PaaS and IaaS are leveraged to access numerous services, including hardware and software resources. Whether it’s the latest development platform or a set of processors, storage media, and network switches, these solutions can deploy them for use within hours. By combining the services of PaaS and IaaS (along with SaaS), an entire, full-capacity business environment can be securely provisioned over the cloud.

End users rely on these services to minimize the complexity and expenses associated with purchasing and managing software licenses. PaaS and IaaS also help avoid the hassles associated with managing the infrastructure for development environments and middleware. Users need not engage in the in-depth management of development tools and associated resources.

Simply put, end users only need to manage the services and applications that they themselves develop; the cloud service provider takes care of everything else. Once deployed, developers can get to work—building, testing, debugging, deploying, hosting, and updating their applications in a cloud-based environment that requires zero maintenance. With PaaS and IaaS, the application development lifecycle is considerably simplified.

4. Availability, interoperability, and compatibility

PaaS and IaaS solutions are interoperable. However, compatibility needs to be considered. The solutions offered by some providers include both PaaS and IaaS, while other vendors provide each separately. PaaS is often integratable with IaaS, even if the solutions are from different providers. The best way to ensure compatibility is through discussion with the vendors before finalizing the contract.

In the case of PaaS, developers using public PaaS generally have access to middleware that allows them to set up, customize, and control databases and servers without the need for dealing with any infrastructure whatsoever. Therefore, PaaS and IaaS solutions are capable of exhibiting a high level of compatibility. In fact, it can be said that public PaaS makes use of IaaS to operate, with PaaS operations taking place atop the vendor’s existing IaaS infrastructure on a public cloud. However, it should be noted that this arrangement may tie the end user to one public cloud provider.

Further, robust redundancy measures are a strong suit of both PaaS and IaaS. These services generally ensure a high level of business continuity and can support end users even during widespread power failure, server-side internet outage, or server malfunction. Vendors ensure high availability rates by assigning resources to numerous servers spread across diverse locations. This gives users access to sufficient redundancy and backups.

IaaS makes availability easy. With IaaS, the CAPEX traditionally associated with sufficient backups for both daily and emergency operations and storage can be avoided completely. This is because the CAPEX is typically tied to costly hardware and software and the payroll costs for expertise in regulatory and legal compliance, data management, IT operations, and other related personnel.

5. Performance

Cutting-edge performance is a hallmark of both PaaS and IaaS. Today, enterprises across verticals and scales of operations need advanced platforms and infrastructure. This is because the need for modeling, predicting, simulating, and evaluating aspects of business operations is more prevalent today than it has ever been in the past. With PaaS and IaaS, organizations can access the latest supercomputers, computer grids, and computer clusters in an affordable, user-friendly manner.

Performance can also be enhanced through the use of multiple deployment options provided by some vendors. Cloud deployment options include public, private, hybrid, and community variants. The chosen type of deployment can affect the performance and portability of resources.

Finally, performance is also enhanced on the personnel side of the business. Both PaaS and IaaS provide the desired performance level to development teams, regardless of geographic location. Thanks to these solutions, employee metrics such as teamwork, efficiency, and accuracy are enhanced. Teams can collaborate on projects that use these solutions even when they are dispersed across remote locations, as is the norm in 2021.

Also Read: Top 7 Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) Software Companies in 2021

Differences between PaaS and IaaS

While PaaS and IaaS exhibit similarities in many aspects, they also have many distinctions between them. Below are five differences between these ‘as a service’ solutions.

I. Business Scope

PaaS

IaaS
The business scope of PaaS is narrower than that of IaaS.

When deploying and using PaaS, stakeholders need technical knowledge to develop, test, and deploy applications. The PaaS vendor provides everything that is required for these business activities. As such, the business applications of PaaS are more ‘specialized’ in nature when compared to IaaS.

 The business scope of IaaS is wider than that of PaaS.

In IaaS, users require technical knowledge related to setting up and operating business infrastructure hosted remotely. This mainly entails virtual machines and related elements, including virtual servers, databases, load balancers, storage systems, and network infrastructure.

 

II. Unique Selling Proposition

PaaS

IaaS
With PaaS, business users enjoy a flexible and easy-to-operate development platform that is ready to use out of the box.

PaaS bolsters productivity by offering turnkey programming elements used by developers to integrate their applications with new features. These include artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, chatbots, and the internet of things (IoT). PaaS also features ready-to-use application development tools such as Kubernetes, cloud-native services, container engines, and Docker.

PaaS also provides users access to the fundamental advantages of cloud computing. These include transparent pricing, turnkey deployment, on-demand scalability, and robust disaster recovery. All elements of PaaS can be managed seamlessly through user-friendly dashboards. As a result, enterprises can simplify and standardize their IT operations, enhance business innovation, reduce the risks associated with operations and cybersecurity, and ensure regulatory compliance.

 With IaaS, business users enjoy near-direct control over their infrastructure and business operations.

With the right use case and IaaS solution, companies can save significant capital and operating expenses. Startups and small and medium enterprises can go in for a small-scale IaaS subscription in the beginning and scale up as business requirements increase.

On the other hand, multinational corporations often feature sprawling infrastructure across geographies. This can sometimes make management, cybersecurity, business continuity, and disaster recovery expensive and cumbersome. IaaS addresses these issues by shifting the management of infrastructure, at scale, to a specialist third-party vendor. Stakeholders can then enjoy a consolidated view of their infrastructure without having to deal with the associated management problems.

 

III. Application

PaaS

IaaS
PaaS removes all hassles associated with business platforms.

With PaaS, companies have access to environments with advanced application development and deployment tools. PaaS offers developers a timely and economical method to create unique, functional, and easy-to-use applications. With this solution, rote tasks such as managing security patches and software updates become less time-consuming. Thus, PaaS enables developers to stay focused on the creative aspect of web or application development.

 IaaS simplifies online applications.

Companies adopt IaaS solutions for access to infrastructural resources that can be scaled up or down and even replaced. Enterprises use IaaS to access an environment wherein running daily business processes and completing workflows become easy. A prime application of IaaS is ensuring steady access to sufficient infrastructure even when the demand for bandwidth is unpredictable.

 

IV. End-user Control and Responsibilities

PaaS

IaaS
PaaS remotely delivers both hardware and software solutions for application development.

In this case, the vendor hosts the physical infrastructure as well as the required software to create a ready-to-use platform. This platform is then made available on a pay-as-you-go basis using a secure connection over the internet. The PaaS vendor generally takes care of operating systems, databases, web servers, and even access to the desired programming languages and execution environments. As such, end-user companies need to invest far less than they would in the case of IaaS.

 With IaaS, the majority of control over the infrastructure is retained by the client company, even though it is hosted remotely by a vendor.

Even personnel with limited IT experience can access and oversee architecture operations through the use of IaaS. Essentially, IaaS is equivalent to a cloud-based virtual data center. Unlike PaaS, IaaS clients are expected to manage user-facing software aspects such as applications and operating systems. The provider will only take care of the physical infrastructure and related aspects such as hardware, electricity, server-side internet access, and security.

 

V. Associated Personnel

PaaS

IaaS
Human resources use PaaS with business roles such as a ‘developer’.

With PaaS, developers creating applications or software do not need to start with an ’empty slate’, thus saving a lot of company time and money that would otherwise be spent on the writing, testing, debugging, and deploying code.

Stakeholders make use of PaaS to build customized applications, usually through APIs. This app can then be delivered using the cloud. PaaS includes middleware, database management systems, business intelligence (BI) solutions, development tools, and infrastructure such as storage, servers, and networks. These solutions are designed to provide end-to-end support for the application lifecycle within one integrated environment, from building and testing to deployment, management, and updates.

 IaaS solutions are generally used by personnel with roles such as a ‘network architect’.

IaaS allows users to access services and resources to create virtual machines (VMs), deploy operating systems on VMs, use middleware for databases and similar applications, install enterprise workloads onto VMs, and build storage buckets for operations and redundancy. IaaS providers also offer services such as cost tracking, performance monitoring, network traffic balancing, application troubleshooting, and disaster recovery management.

Stakeholders rely on IaaS to build, deploy, and access their desired infrastructure quickly and cheaply on the cloud. IaaS applications are witnessing skyrocketing demand because the deployment and maintenance of on-premise IT infrastructure are labor-intensive and costly.

Takeaway

Both PaaS and IaaS offer unique advantages to businesses that have relevant use cases. Especially in 2021, where the entire concept of ‘on-premise’ faces an uncertain future across many verticals, these ‘as a service’ solutions are expected to continue to increase demand over the coming months and years. Understanding what each solution has to offer will go a long way in employing the right environment for your organization.

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